Niche Recruiting

Recruiting quality candidates all begins with a well written job posting. The purpose of a job posting in general is to attract the best applicants and deter those candidates that simply apply to EVERY job. HR pros that take the time upfront to write an awesome job ad can save a lot of time sifting through unqualified candidates later.

Think of a job posting as a gatekeeper. In order for the gate aka the ad to function properly, it must be clear and concise. When a job posting is vague, you’re simply asking for anyone to walk through that gate. A job shouldn’t leave room for interpretation when it comes to requirements. And requirements should be listed near the top of the posting with a statement that reads “Applicants that do not meet these requirements will not be considered.” This statement will hopefully deter those unqualified applicants.

With the Academy Awards approaching I’m trying to see as many nominated films as I can—so I recently saw “The Imitation Game”. If you’re not familiar with the (true) story, it takes during WWII and it is the story of the incredibly smart team of people that worked to crack Nazi codes in England. Alan Turing (he is considered the creator of computer science) led this team of geniuses and he knew that recruiting these brilliant minds was going to be hard (a concept recruiters are sadly all too familiar with). But Turing’s recruitment method while unconventional was actually quite simple.

Long gone are the days of a 30-year career with one company. The average person changes jobs 11-15 times during their lifetime and many of them simply hop from job to job without any real strategy or career management roadmap.

In his recent interview with the Recruitment Advisor Blog, Rich Milgram, Beyond.com's Founder & CEO, discusses how people need to focus more on career management, not just finding the next job. And companies shouldn't hire just to fill seats.

If companies--and the people they hire--could take more of a more holistic approach to career management, it could eliminate job hopping, and build stronger, more fruitful employer-employee relationships.

“Turn off that Atari and get to bed!” My mom would yell up at me as I sat in my room, staring blankly at the TV screen playing my video games.

Like most kids do, I’d stomp my feet in protest, struggling to pull myself away from whatever video game I was immersed in … complaining under my breath. And she’d yell up to me “Life isn’t all fun and games!”

Turns out she was wrong. Sort of.

Gamification has been a hot topic for a while, and with the advent of games disguised as personality tests, it's now making its way into the recruitment process.

OK, so you’re a hiring manager, and you’ve just arrived at the office, grabbed your coffee and opened up your email inbox. There--in boldfaced lettering--the subject line of my email screams “JOB PROPOSAL MEMO”. And you’re thinking…great. Another spam from some job seeker. But you open it anyway.

And that’s how my story at Beyond.com began.

10 years and 2 weeks ago, a new position was created at Beyond.com, which was invented and filled by yours truly. The primary tool used to accomplish this? It wasn’t a resume or cover letter. It was a Job Proposal Memo.

CRM, ATS, JADs…the dizzying array of acronyms in the HR products and services ecosystem is overwhelming, and with the addition of new and unique players who are cropping up every day, the delineation between who vendors are and what they do has become blurry and confusing.

The product and technology roadmap from prospect to employee can be generally broken down into 7 major and distinct areas:

The song “Feelings”, written in 1974 and
performed by many artists since that time, is running through my head as I pen
this post. And now, with the addition of
some new “human capital emotional monitoring tools” that have recently hit the
market, perhaps HR professionals and business owners will soon be singing the
same tune.

Basically,
the way these tools work is pretty simple. As an HR administrator, just download the app or log in to the web site,
set up the administrator account, and invite your employees to
participate. Employees then can click a
smiley face or frowny face, or use a slider bar and tell the app how their feeling about their job. Your employees can do this real time and as
many times a day as they desire. This
data is then aggregated from all of the participating employees across the
company and can be used to get a real time pulse on how your employees are
feeling. Think of it as an electronic
mood ring for your employees. Clever.

Before it was easy to build your own blog, before Facebook
was hot, before the ability to tweet a
message to the world…getting your
skills and qualifications in the hands of the right people was much different
than it is today.

Not so long ago, job search meant sweating over an IBM
typewriter—or in later years—a word processing program, driving to
the local stationary store, picking up the parchment paper, and getting just
the right stamp for the outside of the envelope. And, most of the time your envelope
would be opened by a real person, who would experience your application from
both a visual and tactile sense as they unfolded your resume and cover letter
and perused the contents.Back in
the day, these were just a few of the resume rituals that were quite
commonplace.

Fast forward to now. At the push of the button, you can
apply to almost any job, anywhere. A job seeker has access to more jobs, more
companies, and more opportunities. And, of course, employers have their pick of
more candidates, with more experience, from more places. Job seekers have more
jobs at their fingertips, but are competing against far more people. Employers
have more talent at their disposal, but struggle to identify the best talent
amidst the sea of applications.

In the process the resume has been downgraded to mere words
in binary format, competing for the attention of computer systems that are the
gatekeepers to recruiters. The traditional resume still persists but, as renowned
HR expert Peter Weddle recently said, it is about as “inspiring as a
brick.”In fact, in a recent
Beyond.com poll, over 57% of the HR professionals we polled said that an infographic or visual-style resume would help them more
quickly evaluate candidates over a traditional resume.And, 79% of jobseekers said that they
wish they had a better way to present themselves online.Resumes are primed for an upgrade.

In the age of social media, your personal brand is
king. You are the marketing
department for the product of "You."You are the sales person for
yourself.And the cacophony of available
self-publishing, self-branding, self-broadcasting tools is exhaustive and
overwhelming.Every day, a
new social network pops up or some new-fangled job search site promises to give
you all the jobs, handle the apply for you, and make
your job search quick, easy, and painless. And yet, most job seekers still must
rely on a few pages of largely unformatted copy and bullets to get hired.

At present, that is the reality.
A more evocative resume doesn’t play well with Applicant Tracking Systems
(ATSs), and 93% of hiring managers are still going to ask for the traditional
resume at some point during the hiring process.But, recruiters and HR folks are already
stepping outside of their systems to get a fuller picture by searching Google
and looking people up on social media to find out who they really are.A growing
number of companies are developing alternatives to the traditional resume. Over
the next few years, these formats will continue to gain traction, become better
integrated with ATS systems and other technology, and grow more widely used and
accepted by job seekers and recruiters.

Here’s a look at 10 companies that are leading the
charge in enabling professionals to craft a more visual resume and make a
better online elevator pitch.I
graded each tool based on eight important criteria to demonstrate their value
(see addendum).

Released in Beta in January, 2013, Graph Search is Facebook’s new people search tool. The name isn't very sexy, but what it can do for recruiters, marketers, and those of you looking to troll Facebook to find a date is actually pretty powerful. Almost scary.

Expands
Its Social/Employment Platform in Mid-Atlantic Region with well-known brand

Beyond.com Inc., The Career Network, today announced the
acquisition of strategic assets of Human Capital Solutions, LLC (d/b/a
JobCircle.com), through its subsidiary Career Management Solutions, LLC.
JobCircle.com is a leading online job portal for employers and job seekers in
the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The acquisition enables Beyond.com the
opportunity to expand The Career Network online with virtual career fairs and
offline with live career events in several markets, including the Tri-State
area (PA, NJ, and DE) and the IT vertical market.

JobCircle.com provides its 1.3 million registered members
with an array of tools to simplify job posting and candidate search processes.
Founded in 1998, it’s best known for developing and producing targeted career
fairs and events tailored to more than 18 industry categories.

Contributors

Rich Milgram
Rich Milgram is a software engineer turned entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience. As the proud founder and CEO of Beyond.com, he is a recognized leader in the HR tech space.
More About Rich Milgram

Julie Shenkman
Julie Shenkman is a Marketing and Communications Manager at Beyond.com. She has more than seven years of experience in the areas of public relations, social media, online marketing, and sarcasm.
More About Julie Shenkman

Joe Stubblebine
Joe Stubblebine is Vice President of Corporate Outreach at Beyond.com. Joe has over 14 years of entrepreneurial recruitment products and services experience.
More about Joe Stubblebine

Joe Weinlick
Joe Weinlick is the Vice President of Marketing for Beyond.com. Joe has over 20 years of experience building brands, and as an advocate for consumers and the user experience.
More About Joe Weinlick

Infographics

Would You Work on Thanksgiving?This time last year we surveyed job seekers to see how they'd feel about working on Thanksgiving, so this year we wanted to do it again.